RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Em­ploy­ees of the San Juan Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SJL­RC) are re­port­ed­ly in dire fi­nan­cial straits due to out­stand­ing salary pay­ments.

A sig­nif­i­cant short­fall of $2 mil­lion ear­li­er this year has caused wide­spread dis­tress among the work­force, who have been strug­gling to meet es­sen­tial needs.

One work­er ex­pressed frus­tra­tion, stat­ing, “We have not been paid what is right­ful­ly due to us for months. They are hold­ing back our pay­ments to make up for the miss­ing mil­lions. Why should we suf­fer? We have bills, mort­gages, and fam­i­lies to care for. How will we put food on the ta­ble?”

A coun­cil­lor at the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment-led cor­po­ra­tion, who spoke un­der strict anonymi­ty, said in­suf­fi­cient funds in the cor­po­ra­tion’s vault have led to un­paid over­time, trav­el ex­pens­es, and com­pen­sa­tion for per­son­al equip­ment used for of­fi­cial busi­ness. 

It was al­leged that mil­lions had gone miss­ing, re­sult­ing in out­stand­ing pay­ments for work­ers.

He­s­ton Lam­bert, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers could not con­firm the miss­ing mil­lions, but said that ear­li­er this year work­ers faced de­layed pay­ments to­talling ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2M. 

He said that de­spite a par­tial pay­ment in April, two fort­night­ly salaries re­mained un­paid.

“Some work­ers got paid for one fort­night and some didn’t. Still, there’s two fort­nights owed across the board and three in some cas­es,” Lam­bert said.

“Last Tues­day, dur­ing a coun­cil meet­ing, we dis­cussed cut­backs on work­days for some em­ploy­ees,” the coun­cil­lor dis­closed.

“Em­ploy­ees like wack­er op­er­a­tors, who use their equip­ment, are no longer com­pen­sat­ed for their ex­pens­es, in­clud­ing fu­el and main­te­nance costs. This has bred re­sent­ment among work­ers, who see it as abuse by the cor­po­ra­tion.” 

He said it was raised in the last coun­cil meet­ing that the cor­po­ra­tion had no funds to pay salaries and planned to take funds from the De­vel­op­ment Projects vault to cov­er the out­stand­ing pay­ments, in­tend­ing to re­turn them when funds came in.

A let­ter ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia re­vealed the cor­po­ra­tion’s apol­o­gy for de­layed pay­ments. 

Signed by act­ing CEO Vanese Camp­bell, it read, “This let­ter ad­dress­es the re­cent mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­gard­ing the sta­tus of out­stand­ing al­lowances and over­time pay­ments. First­ly, I of­fer my sin­cer­est apolo­gies for any in­con­ve­nience and dis­tress this sit­u­a­tion may have caused.

“I un­der­stand the frus­tra­tion and hard­ship this de­lay may have caused, and I want to em­pha­sise that I am work­ing dili­gent­ly to ad­dress the out­stand­ing pay­ments as soon as the nec­es­sary funds are re­ceived from the Min­istry. Fol­low­ing this, an­oth­er vire­ment will be done to cov­er the re­main­ing bal­ance.

“It is my sin­cere hope that we will be able to make the en­tire out­stand­ing pay­ments in the short­est pos­si­ble time once the funds are re­ceived from the min­istry.”

Guardian Me­dia was told that on Mon­day the rep­re­sent­ing union was ex­pect­ed to have a meet­ing with the ad­min­is­tra­tion to dis­cuss out­stand­ing pay­ments. How­ev­er, de­tails of the meet­ing were not avail­able up to late yes­ter­day.

When con­tact­ed, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi said, “I have no re­ports of the kind you have sent and have asked for a re­port, which I’m yet to re­ceive.”

Ques­tions sent to the chair­man of the San Juan Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Richard Wal­cott, went unan­swered.